Gym
Membership Or Work Out at Home?
By Robert
Braun
Can't decide whether to join a gym or buy home equipment? You probably
got the pitch at the gym. Here's the other side.
You see all the fancy and expensive equipment at the gym. Why would
the gyms have such equipment if you didn't need it? The answer is
so that they can convince you that you need to buy a gym membership.
Most prospective gym members should be asking themselves: What equipment
do I really need? Can I buy it most of it myself and save money
at the same time?
A big advantage of most gyms is that they are big! They can fit
in a variety of machines for many different exercises that you probably
don't have room for at home. However, a home gym can allow you to
do many different exercises on one piece of equipment in a relatively
small area. Thus, if you have space for a home gym and know what
equipment you need to do the exercises you want to do, that may
be the better alternative.
Then there's that consideration we all care about - money. Gym
memberships vary widely in cost, with all sorts of deals for the
"last day of the special low, low price." Let's say you are serious
about getting in shape and would pay $400 per year for a membership.
Would you stop after the first year? What if you got low on money?
Compare that to buying a $700 home gym that you could use for many
years into the future. Financially, you'd be far ahead buying the
equipment. That's what gyms do and that's how they make money!
There's also the other consideration we all care about - time.
How long does it take to get to and from the gym? If you're close,
its 15 minutes each way. Half an hour per day, three times per week,
50 weeks... that's seventy-five hours per year! If you make $20
per hour, that's worth $1,500 per year to you. Hmm... doesn't look
so good there, either.
Worse, what else could you be doing with that time? If you work
out at home, you could be watching TV, waiting for that phone call,
watching the kids, and listening to whatever you want to on your
sound system. Convenience!
And now that we have dispensed with the logical reasons, we are
left with perhaps the most important reason people would rather
work out at home. They don't want anyone to see what bad shape they
are in! That's not you, of course, but perhaps you'd like to be
in better shape before showing your body off, eh?
What kind of machine you should buy depends on your budget, space
available, and what you want to accomplish with your exercise routine.
People who like running tend to buy treadmills. People concerned
about their joints tend to buy elliptical machines. A common decision
is to purchase is a home gym that allows multiple exercises PLUS
buying either a treadmill or elliptical. This allows both weight-bearing
muscle training and cardio-vascular training.
http://www.treadmill-world.com
http://www.elliptical-world.com
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